Tuesday, 4 April 2017

PMT Branding

In response to International Women's Day, my tight homie Alison Baskerville had an idea to hold a special event in Birmingham. A couple of WhatsApp messages and a little meet-up later, PMT was born, in this instance standing for Powering the Matriarchy Together. Gender equality is a serious business, but from the beginning this was fun, light and playful in its approach and focused on celebrating womxn, directly challenging stereotypes and any one-sided approach to feminism just by being itself (or ourselves). I enthusiastically offered my services to create the PMT branding, which I got the idea for whilst on a run around my neighbourhood, thinking about all the different things womxn do with their hands, such as making art, holding babies, building things, throwing punches, climbing trees, shaking the hands of men who get paid more than them, dishing out rude gestures... the list is endless.

I used this idea as the basis upon which to build the branding, including P M T shaped hand gestures (developments below) as well as a pair of hands to represent each of the four content areas: body, love, work and art (above).

Inspired by the skin tone options now available for emojis, I applied 5 different colour variations to the developed PMT gestures scheme for people to choose from and share in whichever combination they pleased. For me this was a visual way to signify something that was at the heart of PMT - for this celebration of IWD to be as intersectional as possible. With the exceptional Suriya Aisha of UNMUTED as part of the team, we were guided in how to made it clear in all communication that PMT was to celebrate the rich mix of womxn and non-binary people in the city, whilst being open for anyone to attend. It was particularly special to be able to welcome whole families to this.

The day itself was jam packed with fun activities for attendees to get hands on with, including mentoring sessions, practical workshops, discussions and a PMT makers area featuring local makers such as Geenie Jay, Winter & Rain, mOmhead and more. As a creative jack-of-all-trades it was so fun to get my teeth into all aspects of the festival, helping to support Ali and the team with everything from programming, logistics and running the festival's social media presence, to cutting flowers as gifts for speakers and arranging balloons on the day. It was beautiful to work so closely with other womxn and achieve something like this together and showcase the work of more besides, as part of something that stayed fairly small, and special, but with a lot of heart, sweat and glitter.

To find out more about the day, you can check out the following links to various documentations below:

Greetings & Salutations

Here you will find a creative account of my illustrated life with a shifting emphasis on WORK, REST and PLAY; encouraging professional development, experimentation and wellbeing as key components of creative practice.